UFO spotted by US fighter jet pilots - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-42405205/ufo-spotted-by-us-fighter-jet-pilots-new-footage-reveals <comment><USER2> Keep in mind one branch of the military was successfully flying this in 1977:

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Ha...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Have_Blue_bottom_view.jpg/220px- Have_Blue_bottom_view.jpg)

(a picture of Have Blue - the precursor to the stealth fighter. It defiantly looks like something out of this world to the eyes of someone in 1977)

<comment><USER3> And then there's stuff like this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar)

So, really, its likely that any UFO is military in nature, rather than extraterrestrial.

<comment><USER4> This is a common retort (in my view, to make people feel better and not have to consider the implications otherwise) -- here's the pentagon official in charge of the program stating unequivocally that these are almost certainly not related to any aircraft in any national inventory

[https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program- at-t...](https://www.npr.org/2017/12/19/571868263/secret-program-at-the- pentagon-spent-million-to-study-ufos)

The thing that makes these interesting is the fact that they exhibit aeronautic behavior, while tracked by multiple computers and witnesses, that is not physically possible with known methods of propulsion, not because they look like shiny discs.

<comment><USER5> There's nothing that's not physically possible here, just bottlenecked by G forces limitations on human passengers. Given the fact that drone technology testing was extremely popular at the time, I wouldn't be surprised if it's just experimental drone testing.

<comment><USER4> How can you _possibly_ make this claim?

The director of this program is on record saying that after deploying extensive analytical resources at the Pentagon onto all the evidence (cross referencing radar signatures, satellite feeds, etc) and leveraging internal expertise to rule out alternatives there remain cases for which there remains no explanation consistent with the idea that these are aircraft in any government's inventory or any other natural phenomena.

Either this person is lying, or somehow otherwise should be given no credibility, or the government has decided to reveal that there are in fact objects in the sky whose origin are, to the best of our country's ability to analyze them, unknown. This person _specifically_ ruled out the idea in their NPR interview that these objects are part of some hidden government advanced aircraft program.

You can believe what you want to sleep better at night, such as that there is in fact some hyper-advanced tech the government has that this program was kept in the dark about, but there's not much wiggle room at this point other than to accept that the level of public acknowledgement of the UFO phenomena by the federal government (and particularly, the department of defense) has changed significantly now and that there is a very high prior that there are objects in the sky whose origins are a mystery.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. I'm as skeptical as it gets re: UFOs—and in general, really—and I have no idea how to process these videos without coming to the conclusion that something _significantly_ outside of all current human understanding is going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sold on the whole UFO cover-up thing. If you peel back the social ridicule (very successfully induced by US government collaboration with Hollywood) and consider the huge number of circumstantial reports from across the military and non-military it seems pretty clear there's stuff in the skies of non-human origin. Historical art suggests they've been flying for centuries.

There's also the publicly acknowledged reports of NASA and various governments/military conducting investigations and spending millions of dollars in the process.

Historically it would have been politically difficult for governments to come out and admit this - and when they did (like after Roswell) it was quickly retracted.

Peel back the social conditioning and reconsider the likelihood of this given all the reports.

<comment><USER8> I'm open minded to what you're saying, and I agree that dismissing alien contact due to popular zeitgeist is silly.

But here's my problem with what you're saying: where did they come from then, and how did they get here? Why do we not have any evidence of their planet in any reasonable distance from Earth? Given what we understand about modern physics, we have three conclusions we can arrive at:

1\. We fundamentally misunderstand physics, in particular the central concept that the speed of light is a hard speed limit on motion, and aliens are capable of arriving here faster than light,

2\. The aliens have technology capable of arriving here from so distant a home world that they are either inconceivably long lived or else their entire society existed on a transport vessel for generations and generations,

3\. Sightings of UFO are examples of popular hysteria, and aliens are not, and have never been anywhere near Earth.

Given the available evidence, Occam's Razor suggests #3. I understand that reports from distributed and disconnected sources can be encouraging, but realistically speaking it still presents insufficiently extraordinary evidence to me to abandon possibility #3.

<comment><USER9> I used to be fascinated with the UFO reports and such as a kid.

However, I grew up, and learned physics. And then later I learned about things like Molecular Nanotechnology.

Aliens, as popularly conceived, have not been here, and will not be coming here.

Why? I'll explain.

Space is big. Like, really big. The distance to the nearest star system is 4 light-years away. Even for a small object, it takes an enormous amount of energy to get going at a "reasonable" speed, like at some fraction of the speed of light. For an example of a more reasonably-sized object, Voyager 1 would take 70k years to get to the closest star system (4LY away) if it was headed in the right direction.

But then you have to stop! If you accelerate up to 0.1c (very fast), you have to decelerate to arrive at your destination. This is where the rocket equation kills you. Even with super-mass efficient ion drives (which with our current technology provide very low thrust), accelerating your spaceship to a reasonable speed, and then have enough delta-V to stop at the destination requires an even more crazy amount of energy.

If any aliens are headed to our solar system, we'd see their drive flairs from a long way out.

The most efficient system is to use a light sail (really, a laser sail). This is so you don't have to carry all that reaction mass with you, thus bypassing the rocket equation. And then there's a trick where you detach most of your sail, allowing it to reflect light back towards the ship for the deceleration half of the trip.

But again, even for a small (like 1kg) payload, this requires a stupendous amount of energy. And we'd see them coming because they'd be shining a big, big laser in our direction.

There are also Bussard ramjet drives, and other speculated technology, but these would all likely be slower because of the mass required to build it.

Now simply flinging out a bunch of von Neumann replicators out in every direction would be much less obvious (though very slow), until the space dust starts building infrastructure in our solar system... but that's a talk for another day.

<comment><USER10> But maybe the UFO are really old machines (like millions of years old) in which case they can take all they time they need to travel and decelerate, such that wouldn't produce drive flairs.

<comment><USER9> Anything is possible, but that doesn't seem likely.

It is helpful to think of what would aliens want from us that they can't get at home.

Raw material, like in the mini-series V, Oblivion, Uplift War trilogy, etc? It is too expensive to ship matter anywhere. If you need a lot of it for a construction project, you'd be better off heading to the galactic core.

Maybe they want our cultural uniqueness? But they could easily simulate many virtual worlds with different starting conditions, and poke around those without leaving the comfort of home. That would be much easier, especially after they get bored with humans.

And if they have advanced molecular nanotechnology, it isn't just waiting millions of years for results. They are likely running at a much higher "clock rate" than we are now. You can run an uploaded mind much faster than a biological one. So these hypothetical aliens would instead be waiting billions of years of subjective time for their probes to find something interesting.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it'd be pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents have seeing children grow up.

<comment><USER9> _Maybe they just want to study us. If we discovered an alien race it 'd be pretty interesting to watch them evolve. It'd be just like the fun parents have seeing children grow up._

Maybe, but I find that unlikely.

If they do want to pursue those sorts of activities, then can do much more, much faster while closer to home. Why settle for observing one naturally evolved species, when you can make dozens (or thousands) of your own?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those interested in other "legitimate" UFO sightings, I'd recommend "UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record" by Leslie Kean [1]. The author is an investigative journalist who sets out to interview observers of relatively well-documented UFO encounters, and ends up speaking mostly with military pilots from around the world. It's a good read, and is even-handed and well written, especially considering the genre.

In the book, two things stood out to me. First, there are a quite a few UFO sightings that are corroborated by non-human sensor data (mostly radar and video). Second, the narrative paints a picture where US government officials are much more secretive than any other nation, by far. Within that context, the releases of the last few weeks are even more surprising.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in a modern, not-too-X-files-like take on UFO phenomena.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8287034-ufos](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8287034-ufos)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for sharing the book.

I agree that the releases from the US Gov the last few weeks have been VERY surprising, nearly a 90 degree shift from the "deny everything" policy that they assumed for the last few decades.

Going one step further, at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I just wonder, what actually has changed to prompt this change in policy of denying everything

<comment><USER13> I've been suspicious for some time that the US federal government believes that there is likely to be sort of major societal upset in the near future. I can't imagine that it would be "Disclosure", though. I don't know what it could be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Entertaining, almost convincing. I want to believe.

However we know it is one of...

* A hoax, like hundreds of other videos of UFO sightings.

* One branch of the military testing a piece of equipment another branch is not able to identify.

* A video showing an actual space craft built by aliens from another planet.

Consider which of these is most likely and which is least likely. Consider also that extraordinary claims should be backed by extraordinary evidence.

I'm surprised BBC picked this up.

<comment><USER15> Could also be a genuine error like a fly on the lens or a bug in the viewfinder software.

<comment><USER5> That's a thermal camera, so I'm a little bit doubtful it's a bug, plus there were apparently multiple witnesses and computers there.

<comment><USER15> This story got picked up because there's actual video footage. But unfortunately only one video. If there were multiple observers, why can't we see multiple videos?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey meta question here, why do dupes not link to the thing they're a duplicate of. Kinda sounds like it would make navigating to dupes a lot less of a pain.

Not meta comment, aren't all flying objects UFOs until you've identified them?

<comment><USER17> Meta Answer:

HN eschews all modern UI affordances as a form of status signalling. It's like how millionaire startup founders like to wear cargo shorts and hoodies.

It's Y Combinator's way of saying, "we're so fucking successful we can afford to have a site that eclipses even Craigslist in un-usability."

<comment><USER18> Alternative view: "We're successful _because_ we have a site that works simply, without much unneeded complexity, and choose to keep it simple for the sake of our users."

<comment><USER16> Links are notoriously complex. One time I had a user whose head exploded when they saw a link to a duplicate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you haven't watched the video, especially the one with the two pilots chatting about the object, you should. If anything it is at least entertaining and will remind you quite a bit of the ATC scene from Close Encounters.

</comment><comment><USER20> My only issue with this - and I can't figure a way out - is that this was a program launched in secrecy, funded with soft money, officially shut down five years ago but by all accounts has continued to operate in the dark... yet we get all this info, military videos, and more from individuals that participated in said program all in public and without extreme anonymity, etc such that would be typical in such a case.

I just don't see why if we had a "confirmed" ufo sighting on military video that was a product of such a program, would we really discussing this in such a manner?

</comment><comment><USER21> Was this how the video was released? It seems edited specifically in a way to cause the most mystery. The video starts and ends with it in sight of the camera. There is obviously more to the encounter which raises the question, why was it edited out?

<comment><USER22> The video is either edited for stabilization or that is the smoothest tracking while banked of another flying object that I've seen - or it's something in the camera system.

<comment><USER13> It's the camera system. Another forum where I was reading about this has lots of military and ex-military pilot members, and they identified the make and model of the imaging equipment that was used. No one there seemed to question the validity of the video itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Meh, is this getting picked up by every news outlet?

What important news is getting buried? ;)

<comment><USER24> I assume because there is a feeling that the footage is not faked (as footage of UFO's tend to be), and because the military's incentives to fake a UFO video are usually very much in the opposite direction (i.e. nothing to see here, carry on).

<comment><USER25> I actually think it's perfect. Imagine they have future tech that absolutely crushes any current or next-gen competitors. The public is nosey and every year becoming more and more able to record high quality footage.

So let's drum up the "crazy" about UFOs. So when real UFOs are seen (the ones we created and want to keep secret) nobody can get a serious dialogue going because the UFO signal-to-noise ratio is awful. Everyone will focus on how crazy anyone sounds when they claim they have UFO footage. Especially when one of our military partners or adversaries manage to snag some airborne or satellite imagery of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> # # #

How can people be so Blind??? Look Carefully! That is Just a small Insect (a Bug) walking on the camera's lens! (or on the window that the camera is looking through, on it's inner side) How can't you see it? (you can almost see it's legs!) You can see that it's a bug by it's stability, a target outside the aircraft, like for example another plane would NEVER be so stable related to the aircraft's sight. This also explains why it looks so blurry, that is because the insect is walking on the camera's lens (or on the inside window) and therefore it's out of focus.

Probably it was a Night Flight so they saw it only through their IR camera and not from their aircraft's window. Test it, find a small insect and locate it very close to your smartphone's camera, see how similar it looks to what you see here... (The glow in the video is because of the IR camera).

Pilots can get wrong like any other human been, Many pilots crashed into the sea becouse of Spatial Disorientation, they got confused and thought that the sea is the sky. Also In 2004 Mexican aircraft pilots thought that they are following a UFO but later it turn out to be just some Oil platforms (in the sea below them) that they saw in their IR camera, search in Google for more information about that.

Probably they did some maintenance works on the aircraft on a hot day/night before it took off and some bugs went inside, this things happens!

</comment><comment><USER10> At first I thought it was a spec of dirt stuck on the window, because it kept its position constant relative to the moving airplane. But then when it twisted, I had to give up that explanation.

<comment><USER27> Camera could be gimbal mounted, behind a fixed glass dome - if the speck is on the dome and the camera gimbal moves, it would appear like "the UFO" rotating.

<comment><USER28> Watch the angle displayed near the top of the screen. It passes 0° precisely when the object rotates. I say you're the winner.

(I think the speck would have to be on the lens itself though; a speck on the dome would stay fixed during gimbal rotation. Speck on the lens rotates by virtue of the DSP compensating for the camera rotation to keep the world level.)

I suppose also the "shape" of the object could be lens flare (or another imaging artifact) due to the object being very bright. At least some portion of such an artifact would track with the lens as well.

<comment><USER13> Note that it's a thermal camera - the object is showing up as very hot compared to the background of the sky.

Also, the "halo" effect is an artifact of the imaging system I'm told.

<comment><USER28> The sky is thermally very cold. Something room temperature would show up much brighter.

<comment><USER13> When the MFD says "BLACK", black is hot. When it says "WHITE", white is hot. It switches partway through - the object is hotter than the background.

<comment><USER28> Yes, I know. But almost any object is hotter than the sky, especially if you are above cloud cover. If you own an IR thermometer, point it at the sky on a clear day to see what I mean (you'll get readings well below 0°F).

So just because the object is hotter than the sky & clouds doesn't mean much. It could be "room temperature" (say, an insect or fresh bird poo). Or it could be reflective, and simply be reflecting the heat of the plane or camera itself.

What would be helpful is to know the range of temperatures represented by that image. The object is overexposed, so at least we could get a lower bound on its temperature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does anyone have a link to a "long read" taking this apart based on the evidence? The NYT article doesn't really provide a good skeptic's analysis.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, the NYT article was a thrilling read and quite unusual to see on the landing page ([https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon- prog...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo- harry-reid.html)).

Unfortunately, the sources in the story DO NOT inspire credibility...

      >"...said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]...

This guy has also been involved in "paranormal investigations" and "zero-point energy research" according to wikipedia. Nice fodder for the X-files, but not reality. It is a pity that the NYT reporter didn't take more skeptical view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Dr Steven Greer of the disclosure project[1] recently made a dvd, called 'Unacknowledged'. It's been #one on iTunes documentary (apparently) for a while. In it he talks about 'Unacknowledged Special Access Projects' (USAPs), which basically are illegal. The core of these USAPs is the UFO issue and he has countless witness testimonies from irrefutable military and private personnel, and has advised many people in Washington (CIA director, president elects) about them and they are generally amazed (apparently). One of the things he explicitly mentions (and has been doing so for years), is that there is a secret agenda and that False Flag UFO encounters will be released, which will allow the military industrial complex to continue enslaving humanity.

To the point: recently, he's been vocal to state that all these UFO reports in the media over the last few days are just preliminary Flase Flag UFO events, designed to confuse and obfuscate the real problem.

[1] [http://siriusdisclosure.com/](http://siriusdisclosure.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I once saw something I can't explain. Two spots on the night sky a bit larger than a star and of the color of an incandescent light about a half thumb on an outstreched arm apart. They were slowly moving across the sky, however with a swinging movement forward and backwards about a thumb with a period of two seconds. Like two people side by side walking together two steps ahead then a step back the whole time, just in the sky and this was a smooth movement.

Then suddenly one of the two lights went out. The other one continued the same movement and also went out about a minute later.

This steady swinging movement is an unexplainable riddle for me.

A friend of mine also sighted something in the bright day sky of Spain. He told me that he looked up and then that thing whooshed away in an incredible speed over the Mediterranean Sea.

It's really weird. Either our senses and even the technical equipment like cameras are just fooled or we have extremely strange things going on over our heads.

<comment><USER33> I know a family friend, ~ 80-year-old woman, told me that she one day looked out of the window and saw a really dark, saucer-like object, far, hovering over the woods, she said she blinked, rubbed her eyes, walked outside and it was still there, yelled for her kids to wake up and look out of the window but when her kids woke up it was too late, the object just vanished. She got visibly annoyed when her kids started chuckling at the story.

Rational me doesn't want to believe me, but well, what if it was _something_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's an angle displayed near the top of the screen, which counts down to 0° L and then starts counting up from 1° R.

That transition happens at precisely the moment that the object rotates.

Count me as convinced by the "speck of dust on gimbal-mounted camera" idea [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15961848)

</comment><comment><USER34> NIce distraction while the biggest tax overhaul for a long time is steamrolling over. Maybe we can ask the aliens to pay off our debt.

</comment><comment><USER35> Does anyone think it could be a reflection or a trick of light that is dependent of the viewers position? Eg it's int he same position relative to the viewer and then suddenly "flys away" because the conditions for it to be visible have changed?

</comment><comment><USER36> I am not sure about UFO sightings because it seems unlikely to me that aliens would approach us like this.

However, given the huge amounts of exo planets discovered everywhere around us in the last year or two, I consider it highly unlikely that we are alone.

</comment><comment><USER37> Possibly related?

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/boeing-unveils-new- pl...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/boeing-unveils-new-plane- mystery-aircraft/)

<comment><USER38> how ? the link that you provide is from 2k17, while the article is from 2k4...

<comment><USER39> New planes go through extensive experimental phases. The F-35 took over a decade from _first flight_ to being generally available and that's not even considering the several competing aircraft that were weeded out before the F-35 was selected.

Not saying you are wrong, but a 13 year span doesn't necessarily rule out the link OP posted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Dirt on the camera lens or image-sensor.

</comment><comment><USER26> Comment.

</comment><comment><USER41> Well, I mean, it's a flying object, and they clearly can't identify it, so it's not a "possible" UFO, it's the literal definition of a UFO.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, pet peeve of mine. The word "possible" was added inappropriately. They are absolutely sure, already, that it's a UFO. Which isn't saying much, and deliberately so. It's the first and vaguest thing they call it. If they ever found out what it was, they would _stop_ calling it a UFO. So a more accurate title, if you're optimistic about it being some particular (identified) thing, such as (I presume) alien spacecraft, would be "Possible Non-UFO Spotted by US Fighters."

Misspelled "Camera" also.

Edit: Well this comment is obsolete now that they updated the title. Good work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> "Possible UFO" is a silly phrase if you think about it.

<comment><USER44> Maybe its identification is classified. E.g. the speaker is implying "i cannot confirm or deny whether this is identified"

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's not a possible UFO, just a UFO. U stands for unidentified not extra- terrestrial.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why disclose this now? The incident took place 13 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER47> Suppose Tom delonge is on to something then haha

</comment><comment><USER48> Excuse me, I am generally a naive person. But what is your take on this video? Do you think this is legitimate? Do you think this "proves " there are UFOs?

Or this could be just a strategy for another goal?

For example, somebody mentioned they are trying hard to redirect attention from something else?

Update: I put the word prove in quotations.

<comment><USER3> The video quality is terrible, so who knows, but I've _never_ seen any UFO footage that had any kind of decent quality video. Hell, a 2004 camera phone would be _almost_ as good as this video. Yes, yes, its in the dark and moving fast and whatnot, but I thought that the military would have had much better imaging tech, even back in 2004, than this grainy low res thing. May as well be someones camcorder.

The only thing it has going for it, in my opinion, is that the pilots would have been pretty used to seeing stuff in their cameras and would know the difference between something ordinary and something extraordinary. I do think its more likely that it was some military test plane than something extraterrestrial though, personally.

<comment><USER49> They intentionally degrade the quality of to avoid giving competitors data. I'm sure Congress has seen the original, and it's pretty startling that they still think the object is a legit UFO

<comment><USER3> > I'm sure Congress has seen the original, and it's pretty startling that they > still think the object is a legit UFO

This is just conjecture though. Its pretty difficult for us to have a meaningful discussion about whether Congresses reaction is noteworthy without knowing for sure what they did or didn't see.

Based on what _we_ have to work with, I'm not seeing anything noteworthy here besides some ATC/pilot folks conversation looking at a black smudge on a grainy sky. I guess unless we got to see the original video, its impossible to tell, really.

> They intentionally degrade the quality of to avoid giving competitors data.

Do we know this for sure? Is there a source for that?

<comment><USER49> It's been precedent for a long time. For example, we could have much better satellite photos but it's illegal to sell footage with resolution better than 1 pixel/meter. If they're doing it publicly for commercial satellite imagery I have zero doubts similar secret restrictions for video quality exist for military footage taken with optics

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So where does the rubber hit the road? Oh, you saw a UFO flying around, great. Might as well be 1 million lightyears away if they aren't going to give us advanced technology. The first wheel the people of the interior of Papua New Guinea ever saw was on the bottom of a Japanese airplane flying overhead, so there's that. Seriously, we might as well be a primitive tribe in the Amazon seeing an airplane flying overhead in the 1950s. Ho hum, time to get back to work scavenging for food.

<comment><USER51> There is a very deep soviet science-fiction novel by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: Roadside Picnic. It is relatively unknown in western world, which is very sad since in Russia it is considered one of the pinnacles of Soviet- Russian science fiction works. The plot is as follows:

One day, several strange zones appeared in the world, on a line that extends to a star Deneb. The brave 'stalkers' found all sorts of strange and miraculous objects there - artefacts (some people will remember a popular russian game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with similar things): they can kill and they can cure, but what we do know that the civilization that left them exists on an unfathomable scientific level to us and we can not even start to comprehend them, these objects are like magic to us.

And these strange zones, these strange objects were just a waste to this civilization. They just traveled through the cosmos and did not even notice us when they dumped them, like we, humans, do not notice ants that crawl under our feet while we take a picnic near a road.

<comment><USER50> I read that book. It was the most deeply pessimistic sci-fi book I have ever read. Lots and lots of smoking and drinking too. I liked it though.</comment></comment></comment>


Feds: IBM did discriminate against older workers in making layoffs - <AUTHOR> https://www.wraltechwire.com/2020/09/14/feds-ibm-did-discriminate-against-older-workers-in-making-layoffs/ <comment><USER2> I've seen it spun as a move away from the legacy stack into the new modern architecture. Of course the legacy stack programmers have a suspicious common element.

Also, of course, 2-3-5 years later the legacy stack is still what keeps the business running while all the new shiny toys have come and gone.

I had a boss who came over, asked me what was working on and then looked me in the eye and said, firmly and deliberately, "So you are working on transitioning to the new architecture". I shrugged, said "I guess", and he left. Only later did I realize that he was saving my hide.

<comment><USER3> This is the one of the most important reason i love work from home(aka remote work). Remote work makes it a bit harder to discriminate against age

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A fellow older classmate of mine and I were looking for work after changing careers.

We were talking about his recent interview when he got a call from the recruiter and put her on speakerphone. She told them they were going with someone else because they thought the other person "fit the culture" better.

He asked if she could give some feedback on what that meant and she flat out said "Some people thought you were too old." Shocked he asked again and she repeated it. I don't think it even occurred to the recruiter that it was wrong.

My buddy chose not to do anything, both of us looking for work and etc really didn't want to get into some legal situation and looking for work.

<comment><USER5> What would happen if you lied about your age (eliminate the first 10 years from your resume), both at the time of applying for the job and after joining the company? How much trouble can you get in for that? It doesn't seem unethical at all.

<comment><USER6> Every job I've ever gotten I had to provide ID.

<comment><USER7> Every job that you have gotten has needed ID for background checks. I've never been asked for ID, age, or gender during the interview process. Nor would I give that information freely.

I recently filled an online application that asked for SSN and I dropped it right there. You only need my SSN for employer taxes, no way is that part of any job interview.

<comment><USER8> SSN also has an approximate timestamp encoded into it. The prefix can be linked to the time period it was given out, which is typically at or near birth registration.

<comment><USER8> This is public knowledge, and the prefixes are even used for identity verification at banks.

If you got your SSN at an age other than ~0, you may get flagged as a mis- match when e.g. applying for a new bank account, and it will require a human override to get past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not surprising. Years ago one of my (gray haired) mentors opened my eyes to ageism in this industry by asking me to pay attention to how many programmers in the office have gray hair. Once you start looking for it, it becomes obvious that age discrimination is rampant. Some blame the young workforce on the industry being young, but the industry is decades old at this point so I don't think that excuse holds water.

<comment><USER10> Older workers have experience. Experience is expensive. You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc. Age discrimination is rarely punished, and when it is, the penalties are minimal.

Incentives matter.

<comment><USER11> > You can generate a lot of revenue with workers with less experience, even > factoring in mistakes, lower productivity and output, etc.

It's not at all clear that there a net gain here, so the situation is at best complex.

<comment><USER12> In what way is the net gain not clear here?

It seems clear to me that "even factoring in" means that there is a net gain for the employer, at a net loss to employees.

<comment><USER13> The companies I've worked at have been very bad at measuring things like "this is how much that bug cost us in terms of people who tried the app once and then never came back." They're so focused on the data sources that are easy to collect that things like this are basically invisible. They know churn rate is an important thing to track, but look at it much more from a "what about this new feature, or changing the color of the icons" perspective, than from a "what if our software was less of a dumpster fire?" perspective.

If you want to build quickly AND have flexibility AND have some reliability, you're gonna need some experienced employees, but if that's not a thing you've ever seen cause you've only ever worked with people fresh out of school... you're not gonna know what you're missing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could add "... to the surprise of absolutely no one." to that headline :-).

Blekko was acquired by IBM, and as a result I worked there for 18 months as we transitioned from company to being part of IBM. That they were trying to aggressively move the "old guard" out was not much of a secret.

In their particular case I actually felt some sympathy for them because, as a 100+ year old company, a lot of long time veterans had a comfort zone around what used to work but no longer worked. I had a long, largely one-sided, conversation with a senior leader in their "Cloud" organization to try to explain how companies like Google and Facebook use and deploy data centers as essentially very large computers. But this person was so comfortable and confident in the 'enterprise data center' concepts that died with Digital Equipment and Sun Microsystems they just couldn't wrap their heads around it.

I get that, I struggle with it as well, when the world changes as fast as it does, your have to _actively_ re-evaluate what is "canon" and what isn't. If you cannot do that, then it doesn't help you to stay in a leadership position because you will drive right into the iceberg confident in all your decisions.

<comment><USER15> _> But this person was so comfortable and confident in the 'enterprise data center' concepts that died with Digital Equipment and Sun Microsystems they just couldn't wrap their heads around it._

It doesn't help that IBM business leadership signs off on core IBM Cloud product/service attributes that are essentially old-style IBM remote enterprise data center contracts dressed up in new marketing language. Sign up with a variety of IBM cloud products, and you'll find some still have planned outages. In fact, the IBMid infrastructure sometimes still experiences outages. The notion of a "dial-tone service" is recognized by the IBM Cloud organization as necessary to compete, but that consistent lack across the board is one of many reasons they're a distant runner-up in cloud providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This happens repeatedly and isn't anything new. This happens because there are a bunch of mentally ill people running tech companies that want jobs to be about "belief".

They don't want older people in tech because they want to empire build with the latest and greatest insecure technology.

They want to create frustration engines with poor engineering practices they older tech workers won't put up with it. The goal is to make technology more difficult so they can slowly re-train you to go to other people and hate all technology. This is a real thing and has burned out so many software engineers you'd be shocked at how many of them don't know their manager was the person who purposely made their job difficult to burn out another software engineer.

They want strange conspiracies about what the software actually does that older workers don't need to put up with (because some of it is illegal). If you're good at reading source code and figure out what they are actually doing in the source code, in some cases companies blatantly selling software that doesn't do anything they are selling their customers on. In some cases people inject code into a repository when no one is looking, so they can run side businesses using the company infrastructure. There are a ton of older tech workers who read every line of the source code and when they start asking too many questions people freak out and fire them to maintain a conspiracy.

This happens for all sorts of reasons.

<comment><USER17> This is fascinating, do you have any particular examples of the last paragraph especially? Not saying I don't believe you, but I'm very curious.

<comment><USER18> I've worked at a couple of startups that have operated like this. They had vaporware products, and were focused more on getting money out of investors than they were brining a product to market. I arrive and realize that the code quality is absolutely terrible, and worse, the approach they've decided to take is simply never going to work. I report a list of problems to the CEO, tell them they won't be launching in six months, and that the fastest way for them to get a functional product would actually be to throw everything away and start again.

This makes the CEO angry, because they don't care if they have a working product. They only care about having a good story to tell investors. This makes the existing technical leadership angry, because they don't know how to do things properly, so having somebody say they're doing it wrong is obviously a big issue for them. In fact, the only reason they're in technical leadership positions to begin with is because the startup decided to cheap out and hire people with 2 years experience working in body shops as "tech leads". I realize the company can't be fixed so I leave, and the company folds once it reaches the end of it's runway.

Companies like this aren't terribly uncommon, and they exist primarily to defraud inexperienced investors. FWIW, I've seen this play out at every blockchain startup I've contracted at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It appears that IBM executives specifically told managers to direct layoffs at older workers to make room for younger hires. And apparently they did so in recorded communications:

> The investigation uncovered top-down messaging from Respondent's highest > ranks directing managers to engage in an aggressive approach to > significantly reduce the headcount of older workers to make room for Early > Professional Hires.

</comment><comment><USER20> Median age at Facebook is 28? Wow. [https://www.businessinsider.com/median- tech-employee-age-cha...](https://www.businessinsider.com/median-tech- employee-age-chart-2017-8)

<comment><USER21> Zuck is on record saying he doesn't trust 30+ to write code.

<comment><USER22> Do you have a reference for this? Thanks.

<comment><USER20> "Young people are just smarter." is what he said in 2007, I think he would be careful so that he would not say anything that controversial again.

<comment><USER23> I mean, he was only 23 then, and proving his own negative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not surprised. A few years back IBM started a "back to the lab" initiative to dissuade workers from working remotely. Workers that were unable to commute to a physical office were forced to leave the company. My impression is that this disproportionately affected older workers. It seemed like soon after the dust had settled they no longer enforced the requirement. Note, this was after I left the company, so it's all second-hand knowledge.

I do also recall that they were sued for ageism years ago after a round of layoffs. Afterward they preemptively sent out a list of the ages and titles of all workers prior to layoffs in order to be more transparent. The funny thing is that it was possible in some cases to tell ahead of time who was being laid off based on the age and title. Not a good way to find out about being let go.

<comment><USER25> > Workers that were unable to commute to a physical office were forced to > leave the company.

I was at IBM during this time. As a consultant, my boss fought to keep us remote.

In some cases people were told to go back to the office but physically couldn't unless they packed up and moved. They were hired remote, so they lived in an area that had no office.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is still going on. In the last half of 2019, IBM in NY got rid of a number of older workers, only to replace them with younger workers. In some cases, a younger worker that was recently let go was rehired to replace an older worker.

</comment><comment><USER27> The big tech giants have used this marketing ploy that "older workers don't understand new tech" to undercut them at almost every opportunity.

I honestly have no idea why they are allowed to get away with this in the media and public opinion. Maybe because older people don't know new tech, so they think older programmers don't know it either?

It's insane to me that an older programmer with decades of experience and multiple language fluency is somehow "worse" than a 25 year old who has been programming professionally for a few years at best and probably knows fewer languages.

Tech companies think they can get away with it because they do exactly what IBM did, fire all the old hats, then hire back the ones they really do need at cheaper, contractor rates.

It's pretty revolting to me.

Sure there are old people at these large tech companies just collecting a paycheck and really aren't better than the younger guys, but it's clearly not to the extent that IBM would make you think.

Another reason why I won't ever work for a large company again.

<comment><USER28> > cheaper, contractor rates.

Are contractors cheaper than permanent employees? I always thought it was the opposite - that's why so many positions are "contract to hire". They'd rather have a perm employee, but they want to deal with contracting for a few months just to be on the safe side.

<comment><USER25> I left IBM by choice to become an IBM sub-contractor. I was paid better and had better benefits. I don't really see how IBM is saving money here.

<comment><USER29> If you are still subbing for them, raise you rate. IBM was one of my best paying contracts, but I hated the work. I kept raising my rate to make them go away, Finally I had to say you guys are eating up all my consultancy time, I can't take contracts from you, because I am becoming too dependent financially on a single source of revenue. It was a hard financial pill to swallow, given that I was making 4x my rate of any other contracts. We parted ways amicably but I had to make the break, as I was just becoming a satellite around IBM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Propublica did some research on this a couple of years ago and posted a pretty in-depth story on it: [https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age- discrimination-a...](https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age- discrimination-american-workers/)

</comment><comment><USER31> The penalty for IBM: "the Commission now invites Respondent to join with it in an effort toward a just resolution of this matter" and

"If you decline to enter into conciliation discussions, or when the Commission's representative is unable to secure an acceptable conciliation agreement, the Director shall so inform the parties,advising them of the court enforcement alternatives available to aggrieved persons and the Commission."

Basically, not even a slap on the wrist.

</comment><comment><USER32> So what is the punishment going to be for IBM? Pizza for all laid off employees and a free resuming writing class?

</comment><comment><USER33> Leetcode is veiled ageism where those who pass have inordinate amounts of free time to study nonsense

<comment><USER34> Not exactly, but ageism is probably a welcome externality. The value of leetcode is mostly in helping hiring-people wash their hands of some responsibility.

<comment><USER35> Another externality - if not an intended effect - is that it selects for people who are willing to accept an abusive relationship with their employer.

Why do I call it abusive? "Study this stuff, that isn't actually related to your job, on your own time, for free, for months, and we _might_ give you a job." Even if you do get a job, they still abused you.

<comment><USER36> Would you prefer a system of _strict_ credentialism, a system of lotteries, or a system that optimizes for hiring the most eloquent bullshit artists, instead?

Those are your three alternatives to the whiteboard interview.

Which would you prefer? (I'm perfectly willing to admit I've missed one[1], but it's probably a subset of these three.)

[1] Life-long German apprenticeship/Japanese salaryman arrangements don't work in the fast rise/fast fall tech environment. Also, Japanese salaryman culture is horrific.

<comment><USER35> False dichotomy. (Uh, quadricotomy?)

You can do a whiteboard interview without doing leet code. Do an actual coding interview (whether whiteboard or not). Don't do credentials-only. Don't do a lottery. And make sure you don't fall for a BS artist.

But in your coding interview, _don 't do leet code_. Just give a regular coding problem. Not a big one, not a long one, not an especially tricky one. Then watch them code, and listen. (Ask them to think out loud - it's important to understand how they think.) That's all it takes.

<comment><USER36> > But in your coding interview, don't do leet code. Just give a regular coding > problem. Not a big one, not a long one, not an especially tricky one.

This limits the signal of the skill ceiling that you can pick up from the interview. Give an easy whiteboard problem, and both a great candidate and a good candidate will be evaluated to be roughly the same. (No red flags, both solved the question)

It's a bit like hiring a plumber, by giving each prospective contractor a two question quiz: "Which way does crap flow?" [1] and "When is payday?" [2]

At that point, you are just going with a lottery system.

[1] Downhill

[2] Friday

<comment><USER35> We in general don't need great. Good is OK. We just need to avoid bad or terrible.

But we still knew when great showed up. I was one of the interviewers. I remember that the interview switched, from us asking questions to find out how much the candidate knew, to us asking questions so we could learn stuff.

Now she's a principal engineer. In her spare time, she's also my boss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> While serious, this is still an accusation, and will be ultimately decided by the courts not EEOC.

<comment><USER38> Speaking of which, highly relevant: the EEOC just got defanged.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciagbarnes/2020/09/08/an-e...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/patriciagbarnes/2020/09/08/an- era-of-eeoc-activism-ends-with-a-whimper/#11f9df77506c)

<comment><USER39> From that article it seems the EEOC hasn't cared about the particular type of discrimination being discussed here in a long time anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Health care. The actuarial cost of gold or platinum health plan for a 25 year old single man is about $600 per month. The cost for a couple in their 50's, with two college age children, is about $3,000 per month.

<comment><USER41> It's almost like a for profit health care system creates a bunch of really bad downstream effects that are a net negative to the total long term economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I get it. I understand that it is hard for a big company to avoid thinking and optimizing for all the costs associated with older employees versus a younger employee, especially H1Bs.

But, why not use the pulpit that comes with tech prestige (is it now all gone?) to lobby for universal healthcare, and other ways to socialize those costs? If things like healthcare and a sane social security system were in place, wouldn't that even the playing field and be a win for everyone? I'm surprised I don't see more US companies arguing for changes that would help them.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is another form of discrimination that should have stricter laws against.

IBM is so morally bankrupt I c\don't even know where to start. All their products are geared towards having IBM professional services make money. They purposefully do this by making sure the manuals they provide leave out important steps on how to install and configure their software.

Also while they discriminate they should start with their CEO who is 58 years old and their ex ceo who is 63 years old.

</comment><comment><USER44> The actual letter from EEOC [https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7206573/2020-09-0...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7206573/2020-09-02-IBM- LOD-Amended-Final-1-003.pdf)

</comment><comment> BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 IBM's (and other tech company) lawyers have been holding this decision off for some 40 years. Late coming; too bad there's no punitive damages chargeable against upper management bonuses.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm pretty sure that this is in its core not about people being older but people being more expensive.

</comment><comment><USER46> Fast growing industries tend to hire like there is no tomorrow. Eventually they hit a growth barrier. After a while the age structure of the company is a problem. Could not happen in the social media industry...

</comment><comment><USER47> Duh, of course they did.

</comment><comment><USER48> no shit sherlock

</comment><comment><USER49> These threads always fill up with people banging on about how they're 82 years old and still get plenty of work. But I still think you're better off trying like hell to make your money before you're old, before you even have to engage with these jackals.

Our work is not dignified work, our line of work does not have status in the organization nor in the society. Ignore this reality at your peril.</comment>


ICE changes exemptions for foreign students taking online courses in Fall 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/sevp-modifies-temporary-exemptions-nonimmigrant-students-taking-online-courses-during <comment><USER2> Such pathetic leadership. International students already in the country must now either attend an in person class and risk their lives, or fly out from the country with the highest number of infections and spread it to their friends and family at home. Not to mention the loss to the research community.

I can't see anything that is to be gained from this, other than pandering to a xenophobic voter base.

<comment><USER3> Only possible good thing I can see from a US student perspective is that it's now more reasonable to go to grad school in US. Many programs in STEM have gotten out of hand with the number of the foreign graduate students--in some programs the number is over 80% [1]. I think this has led to the US educating many persons who later leave the country for visa issues. Also, some of the competition to get in can be considered bogus: near perfect GRE math which measures high school level math skills is hardly germane for research.

[https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign...](https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/10/11/foreign- students-and-graduate-stem-enrollment)

<comment><USER4> > I think this has led to the US educating many persons who later leave the > country for visa issues

I've never been to the US but, if this is the problem then wouldn't it be better to make it easier for people to stay also after they have finished their degrees? If the goal is to have a lot of highly educated people in the US I mean.

<comment><USER5> USA educates more international students (by far) than any other country. I think the goal of policies like this is to prefer US students. But you're right that it would also be nice if foreign students had an easier time staying in USA after they graduate.

<comment><USER6> It wouldn't just be nice - it'd be smart. We could probably have more immigrant-owned business and immigrant-developed inventions of we made it easy for foreign born US graduates to stay. Both of which should add jobs to the economy and make the US more economically competitive.

<comment><USER5> I think everyone would support that kind of policy except where it would have an adverse effect on American students. The goal of policies like this are to promote USA students admission to higher education over foreign students. But the reality is that foreign student tuition is a huge money-maker. So USA students are at a disadvantage in the admissions process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Nonimmigrant F-1 and M-1 students attending schools operating entirely > online may not take a full online course load and remain in the United > States ... Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such > programs must depart the country or take other measures ..._

This is going to ruin so many lives. An example of how this could result is significant hardship for international students is the case of Iranian students.

Iran has mandatory military service for all male citizens ages 18 and over. People who are students can defer their military service until their studies have concluded. If the studies are outside of Iran, the _temporary exemption from military service for the purpose of education_ status allows students to be present in Iran for a maximum of 3 months per year (approximate length of the summer intermission, so students can have some vacation and visit their family). Stays longer than that are deemed to be at odds with being an active student in a foreign institution, so if a student is present in Iran for longer than that, they are deemed to no longer be a student—the exemption is invalidated and the person has to go through two years of military service before they are allowed to leave the country again.

Any male Iranian student who is forced to leave the US due to this directive is effectively expelled from their program. I am sure this is not a unique situation. There are likely many other such edge cases that affect certain demographics of students. I hope they reverse their decision, otherwise so many careers will end before they even begin.

<comment><USER8> I am not going to defend the Iranian regime or military services in general, which I think is a waste of time for all parties. But is it the role of the US immigration regime to circumvent military duties in foreign countries?

<comment><USER7> My point was that there are likely hundreds of edge cases that ICE did not think about (or care about) when they decided to change the rules. When you create rules carelessly, people fall through the cracks. ICE has now created a massive crack many will likely fall through.

Military service is just one of such cracks, there are likely many many more. Just imagine how many people are likely to lose their scholarships (that is their only way to pay for the program they are in) because this ruling triggers a clause in the scholarship terms, how many mature students with families now have to take their children out of school and out of country for who knows how long and what the effect of this on those children is going to be, ...

<comment><USER9> Have the rules been changed though? These on-line education restrictions (known as "Full course of study") had been in the law for a while, see 8 CFR 214.2(f)(6)(G) [1]. What ICE has done is a temporary suspension of enforcement. Now they just resume normal operation. You could argue they had to suspend it for longer but accusing them of changing rules seems bizarre as what you actually want is for them to change rules (because current rules say that F-1 students cannot do full-time on-line classes).

 _For F-1 students enrolled in classes for credit or classroom hours, no more than the equivalent of one class or three credits per session, term, semester, trimester, or quarter may be counted toward the full course of study requirement if the class is taken on-line or through distance education and does not require the student 's physical attendance for classes, examination or other purposes integral to completion of the class. An on-line or distance education course is a course that is offered principally through the use of television, audio, or computer transmission including open broadcast, closed circuit, cable, microwave, or satellite, audio conferencing, or computer conferencing. If the F-1 student's course of study is in a language study program, no on-line or distance education classes may be considered to count toward a student's full course of study requirement._

1\. [https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/214.2](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/8/214.2)

<comment><USER10> That is true. But the difference is that students used to have a choice (online vs in person classes), and now most don't.

To be honest, there is no purpose for most students to be in the US if they're taking online classes. But there are a lot of edge cases (e.g., students doing research in the lab, graduate students with a research stipend, students in economical hardship with a part time job, etc.) I wonder whether there will be exceptions for them.

<comment><USER11> Classes are the smallest part of college.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As some have pointed out elsewhere, the idea that "they can just do the courses remotely from their home country" has some issues:

\- live classes may happen in the middle of the night

\- tools like GSuite are blocked in China

\- internet connection quality varies

Given the amount of revenue foreign students bring in, this seems like the admin is using access to those students as a lever to force schools to reopen prematurely.

<comment><USER13> There's also the sad reality that for many students, it's not possible to work unimpeded on school work at home. For many, university is the a psychological retreat from home circumstances that are distracting at best the best of times and downright abusive at the worst. It doesn't matter if your Internet is solid if you can't actually focus on the work.

<comment><USER14> Post quals grad students are going to be hard pressed to get a PCR machine, vivarium, or fluoroscope up and running in their parent's house. You know, machines vital to figuring out covid vaccines.

I've no idea how most of them will get any quality lab-bench research done. It pretty much nukes them.

<comment><USER5> Campuses are going to be closed in the Fall. Nobody is going to have access to those things.

<comment><USER14> I know a few grad students at 'closed' campuses currently. Though the admin says the labs are off limits, the PIs are turning blind eyes to it. The labs are effectively open.

<comment><USER5> > Though the admin says the labs are off limits

so the labs are closed then, despite your anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER14> I mean, they are closed, but a lot of people seem to come in anyway and do things just as before, so I am told.

Define that how would wish to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most relevant part:

"Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the initiation of removal proceedings."

I wonder if the Harvard decision today will be modified in response to this. I imagine their international students, especially in graduate studies, must be highly impacted.

<comment><USER15> Probably international students will now attend in person classes and others will be fully remote. Weird to even think that such drastic changes are all happening during a pandemic.

<comment><USER16> Agree. I wonder what is the rationale for all this. Other than plain old xenophobia.

Will this reduce pandemic ? No, it will incentivize colleges to offer in- person classes promoting COVID.

Will this reduce students on non-immigration visas ? Not sure it does (students might find in-person classes somewhere). Some students might just say 'fuck it' and study elsewhere. Maybe that's good for them.

Will this reduce unemployment? Maybe. But I'm doubtful. Most F1 students are barred from working off campus other than internships, and I doubt on-campus work and internships make a dent in unemployment.

<comment><USER8> Plain old xenophobia? How about double digit unemployment rate? We can debate the means. But I can understand why Trump would want to cut down on immigration.

Now a good question is whether there will be unemployment among highly educated people with STEM degrees, who were in hot demand only a few weeks ago, and if not this is counterproductive. But every economic indicator seems to point at a major recession (beyond a technical recession during the lockdown). I would assume everyone will be impacted.

<comment><USER17> You may not know this, but graduate research assistants make less than what many Americans get in unemployment benefits. You are basically getting cutting-edge research work done by non-immigrants for that money. Do you think it is more beneficial for your country to pay a US citizen for doing nothing?

I am a GRA and I work on translational research in neuroimaging and data science. With my career prospects dwindling, I'm considering leaving US if the president gets reelected.

<comment><USER11> Unemployment payments are temporary, not 4 years.

<comment><USER17> Yes, once you get employed you keep making even more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This has become so absolutely stupid at this point. I can even maybe understand this for future admissions. But from the messaging it looks like they want to deport students who came after a valid visa process. This is just absurd.

I hope unis do a hybrid thing like CMU, otherwise it is a lot of pain for students who are already here.

</comment><comment><USER19> This reads like "open your campuses or go fuck yourself". International students make up 6% of all the students in the US with certain institutions probably averaging very large numbers of international students.

This is the sad current state of affairs in this country. A pandemic became a political weapon.

<comment><USER20> At Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, currently ranked the third best business school in the country, 32% of students are international.

[https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time- mba/...](https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/student- culture/class-profile.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is lunacy. Also likely will fail in court since it doesn't follow proper procedures - something the recent Supreme Court DACA ruling pointed out. These nitwits are cruel and incompetent. But all of this has damaged America's higher education system and its attractiveness to foreign students for the long term. Many an economics PhD thesis will model GDP lost from doing everything in our power to scare away educated immigrants.

<comment><USER22> > These nitwits are cruel and incompetent.

This is why I'm afraid of Pence getting President in the event Trump catches corona or has a heart attack or whatever. Or for whatever the Republicans put up after Trump. Because right now the only thing that keeps this administration from doing massive unrepairable damage is their own incompetence because Trump took a bunch of yes men as his advisors and Cabinet.

A government filled by someone with the malice of the current Republicans and the competence of actual professionals? Good night democracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This also pressures universities to have in person classes regardless of the safety of that practice. Universities want to support their students, and indeed one of the draws of many university programs for international students is the entry into the visa system for employment in the U.S. One effect of this policy is to push universities to NOT be in the online-only category, even if it means risking lives by a policy the school would have otherwise preferred to avoid.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand how universities think they can get away with charging full tuition to students while offering online only classes. I would be so furious if I was stuck in this situation of trying to graduate on time but being scammed out of the whole experience I worked so hard to get in to.

If the schools feel so strongly against reopening they should waive their tuition for anyone already enrolled to attend online and close enrollment to new students, and give anyone the option to defer if desired.

I don't blame ICE for not extending their exemption past the summer for online classes. The visa does not allow for online courses. Schools are not making an evidence based decision here, and should not expect special treatment if they aren't willing to offer actual classes. I hope the students who are suing will prevail in court for unjust enrichment.

<comment><USER25> > I don't blame ICE for not extending their exemption past the summer for > online classes.

1\. difficulty of returning home 2\. risk of pandemic spread by returning home 3\. internet connectivity issues 4\. timezone issues 5\. software availability issues 6\. home suitability for studying 7\. ....

"I don't blame ICE". Destroy ICE. This is appalling.

When I became a citizen 3 years ago, I told people that one motivation was that I was very very slightly afraid of Trump even though I was a white european permanent resident of 28 years. It's only taken 3 years to get to where I'd say "not imminently but genuinely afraid" for that sort of immigration status.

<comment><USER24> The schools really should have thought through of all this before canceling classes on all their students who depend so much on attending them.

There's no excuse for outright canceling classes. Classes can absolutely be held safely, if these universities simply chose to invest in the training, procedures, and equipment necessary to do so.

Instead they chose to bank their tuition payments and setup a Zoom call.

This is not a new policy, student visas have never allowed for online classes, and the universities certainly knew this. I think the blame pretty clearly lies with schools who decided to close up shop.

<comment><USER25> > There's no excuse for outright canceling classes. Classes can absolutely be > held safely,

Why do so few people actually charged with making this decision agree with you?

And US college is about a lot more than classes.

<comment><USER24> Probably because they didn't consider the downside to their decision. They don't empathize with the students who can't possibly learn the material without a classroom environment, or for those who worked and dreamed of attending that University for years only to be sent the bill without most of the benefit. To say nothing of those students who literally don't have a (safe) place to live lined up besides being on-campus.

The people making the decision are Administrators who get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to cash the tuition checks and did the calculus that they could shut down "for the safety of their students and faculty" and still cash those checks.

> _And US college is about a lot more than classes._

Absolutely true. I'd say classes are no more than half of what you're paying for. Harvard and Princeton just announced today that many students _will be returning_ in the fall, but still taking classes online. They want freshman and juniors to return in the fall, and sophomores and seniors to return in the spring.

If the decision was simply based on the actual data, the reality is that the student body is much more at risk from the drugs and alcohol on campus than they are at risk from SARS-CoV-2. More to the point; if you take a holistic view, the social, economic, physical and mental welfare of their student body is massively degraded overall by canceling on-campus housing and classes versus by holding them.

<comment><USER26> What about the students that can't go to class because they're with family or friends that are at risk? What about the immigrants who came here to get an education that are now being kicked out because of the administration's cruelty? Why are you encouraging something that would exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus and celebrating forcing people to travel back home and potentially spread the virus cross country?

Come on. This is a ridiculous thing to defend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> >Nonimmigrant F-1 students attending schools operating under normal in-person classes are bound by existing federal regulations. Eligible F students may take a maximum of one class or three credit hours online.

This pretty nuts. From what I understand, even schools that are allowing everyone on campus will have a majority of their classes online or have them be up to the discretion of professors.

This may keep the vast majority of international students out of the US.

<comment><USER28> > schools that are allowing everyone on campus will have a majority of their > classes online

That would make it not a "school[] operating under normal in-person classes" but rather a "school[] adopting a hybrid model." No?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I had hoped my university (Brown) would follow Harvard's suit and err on the side of remote instruction this coming year. With this policy announcement, the chances of that dwindle.

Brown had made special accommodations to allow their international students to remain in dorms over this summer. By eliminating extraneous travel, these accommodations were in the best interest of both these students and the general public. Who is served by expelling them!?

<comment><USER30> > Who is served by expelling them!?

The nativist agenda.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This will further encourage universities to offer in-person instruction. Paying top dollar for a sub-par online education is not what students are after.

</comment><comment><USER32> Chinese students will be safer in China. Bad news for US universities that built dorms and counted on the cash from foreign students. Now they can't come. Many families viewed studying in the US as a pathway to eventual residence. That's gone, at least until there's a new administration.

<comment><USER33> > until there's a new administration

197 days...

<comment><USER34> [https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?msg=Time%20left%20u...](https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?msg=Time%20left%20until%20a%20new%20administration&p0=263&year=2021&month=1&day=20&hour=12&min=0&sec=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> the clown single handedly destroyed this country

</comment><comment><USER36> Can someone offer a sensible reason for this policy? I am trying to look for anything that would make it not look like an outright political decision, but I can't.

<comment><USER37> As Speaker Pelosi said: Don't let a good crisis go to waste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> If I were a school I'd be finding as many possible loopholes as possible.

One minute a semester in-person instruction per course, for starters.

<comment><USER39> *with the instructor being remote :)

I'm completely in favor of this guerilla approach to fighting stupid knee jerk policy changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is intended to punish foreign students - either move to an unsafe university or get out and reset your visa. With a government that's decided to block visa applications arbitrarily.

Alternatively universities have to reopen to people so that it looks like they agree with the absurd demands of the current administration to open earlier than they should.

<comment> murph-almighty And this is how you piss off a bunch of 18-23 year olds who may have had foreign friends impacted by this. Maybe this gets the youth vote out?

<comment><USER41> OTOH maybe their friends couldn't get in because the spot went to a student in a visa

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wonder how they feel about foreigners now working from home...

</comment><comment><USER43> Any prospective international student reading this should REALLY reconsider education in the US. The administration is using everyone as pawns in a massive game of vote pandering.

It's hard enough to study hard and achieve goals. Why come here where you will be treated like unwanted foreigners at best and asylees who should be arrested at worst?

<comment><USER37> International students should simply avoid America all together. There are too many risks, consequences, and pitfalls to make it worth wild.

<comment><USER44> Sadly I made that decision few years ago and I regret it. I came into Canada, and from what I see, industry and research is not even close to USA.

<comment><USER43> > Sadly I made that decision few years ago and I regret it. I came into > Canada, and from what I see, industry and research is not even close to USA.

All the research and industry in the US is shattered. Even if it isn't, the administration is making sure it won't be accessible to you.

Don't have a view a America with rose tinted eyes. The America of the past is gone, all vanished in the last 4 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> is there at least a countdown clock somewhere that marks the remaining time until this is challenged in federal district court?

</comment><comment><USER45> #abolish_ice

</comment><comment><USER46> It's likely continued xenophobia from (the one non-family senior advisor to Trump):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_(political_advi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Miller_\(political_advisor\))

</comment><comment><USER47> My hunch:

Trump hates universities. So he'll do anything to ensure universities are on life support. This is a great way for him to bring the uncertainties to follow his orders.

</comment><comment><USER48> This is a trick.

Trump is telling universities to open up for in person classes or lose all their international students, who will mostly choose universities that have in-person classes over online classes after ICE's ruling.

This is a diabolical move, arm twisting universities into opening up or else losing international students - a major sources of revenue.

</comment><comment><USER49> I doubt this decision is coming from the WH. It's a very simple calculation made by an agency with different priorities from what might be represented here in this forum.

You have thousands of foreigners, a large portion of which might not be in the country, waiting to return to the US to continue their studies. Many of those countries don't even allow US travelers to arrive at this time. Everybody is urging for caution, but that there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of individuals preparing to arrive back here, with possible infections, is something an agency might be concerned about. So naturally, why not prevent this travel from happening in the first place with a policy like that?

Of course it's a heavy handed approach, but so are the lock-downs and closed schools. So we go to great length trying to prevent the spread, we close schools for over 4 month, and some don't even want schools open in the fall, but somehow an influx of half a million students is something nobody should be concerned about?

Those are valid discussions to be had. Assuming right away that this is a way to force universities to open is not a very genuine way of thinking. You cannot encourage full online classes for health reasons, and applaud that on Monday, and on Tuesday complain we don't allow students from all over the world to return just to sit in front of a computer.

Everybody is laser focused on these case numbers, and some states will close schools due to high case counts in the fall, impacting millions of families. If you support that, you should probably also support any measures possible to keep case counts low, including discouraging international travel.

<comment><USER50> > Active students currently in the United States enrolled in such programs > must depart the country or take other measures, such as transferring to a > school with in-person instruction to remain in lawful status. If not, they > may face immigration consequences including, but not limited to, the > initiation of removal proceedings.

Seems like someone didn't read the OP.

<comment><USER49> I read that. And again, this is a policy. You are not thinking this through, in my opinion.

Think about this in a way an accountable official would think.

Most universities don't know what they will do yet in the fall. If you make an exemption for people who are currently already in the country, what would that solve? It would artificially pick those students over those who happened to travel home for the summer. You can't do that. That would probably make such a rule unlawful. So you have to craft such a "heavy handed" rule in such a way that it doesn't have loop holes that can be exploited. Don't think lawyers didn't review this exemption for weeks.

And my earlier points still stand.

I'm not trying to convince people that this rule is all that good. But understand where it comes from, and don't think it's all because of a particular administration. There is certainly logic to this rule. You may not agree with it, but I might not agree with closed schools either.

<comment><USER50> > Think about this in a way an accountable official would think.

No they wouldn't. I've held various (small scale) public facing offices before and this isn't how I would think.

Thinking of the consequences of your actions is a very important thing.

> If you make an exemption for people who are currently already in the > country, what would that solve?

Decrease the damage done?

> So you have to craft such a "heavy handed" rule in such a way that it > doesn't have loop holes that can be exploited. Don't think lawyers didn't > review this exemption for weeks.

They probably didn't. We've seen this administration do bullshit orders before. This isn't a new one. Remember when they banned green card holders from coming to the US and there was chaos for 12-24 hours until they came and said whoops those are exempted?

> And my earlier points still stand.

Your wrong points do stand, yes.

> But understand where it comes from

I do. It's bullshit.

<comment><USER49> You are not addressing any of my points with any substance. But you have to resort to cursing twice.

<comment><USER51> The reason the other commentator thinks your post is bullshit because it doesn't address the clause in the order that requires F-1 students _currently already in the country_ to leave if classes are online-only. This order is not done by some agency being thoughtful about covid19, it's about using the pandemic to put out more xenophobia that the WH will more than approve.

<comment><USER50> Thank you. I just didn't see a point in discussing this further.

Isolationism and enforcing an extra set of standards on __others__ is always disgusting to me. Especially when we've been failing at every step of the way of this pandemic.

<comment><USER51> True. You'll see later that the commenter simultaneously holds the view that covid is overblown but also that we need to move heaven and earth to save schoolchildren, while I bet they're in full support of Trump's asinine "SCHOOLS MUST OPEN!" tweet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>